As engine noise and wind noise of automobiles are reduced as a result of continued efforts to reduce the overall noises of automobiles, the noise arising from the tires rolling over the road surface has presented itself as a major source of the running noise of the automobile. Tire noise is generated by collision between a tire tread and a road surface and it is possible to reduce the level of this noise to a certain extent by modifying the tread pattern. However, since an annular chamber is defined in a tire and this chamber functions as an air column having a resonance frequency of about 250 Hz in the case of a passenger car, the resulting resonance noise accounts for a major part of the overall noise and this noise is required to be reduced.
Such an air column resonance which can be considered as a sonic standing wave can be suppressed by dividing the air column with partition walls or filling the air column with material having a sound absorbing property, but since it means an addition to the mass of the tire and this addition of mass tends to be uneven along the circumferential direction the high speed performance of the tire tends to be impaired and such attempts have not been considered as practical. Japanese Utility Model Laid Open Publication No. 58-97005 discloses a tire having a plurality of partition walls integrally formed with the tire in the interior of the tire, but these partition walls are provided for the purpose of increasing the rigidity of the tire for agricultural machinery and it is not applicable to tires for high speed cruising.